The deal was that they were done with it. It had become spring on the calendar, and though in even the most optimistic of lenses it hadn’t felt spring-like, that was almost OK as long as they were done with the worst of the weather.

After this winter, the people of Cape Cod felt they had earned the right to be done.

They weren’t.

Today, the Cape awoke to the familiar whistle of winter winds tearing at the clapboard, as a ferocious spring storm turned the world to glass and white and tore the sea into chunks of violence. Walk-backwards weather, where the simple act of turning on the road is a blind leap into a cloud.